


The Lucky Ones

by Thistlerose



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: Challenge Response, F/M, Foreshadowing, Kissing, Married Couple, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:18:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne will never shed any tears for George of Clarence.  But Richard is distraught, and Anne loves Richard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucky Ones

She had no words of comfort for him. Anything she might have said would have sounded hollow anyway; while she hadn’t wanted George of Clarence dead, there’d never been any love between them, and Richard knew that. Still, Anne wanted to give him something, to let him know that she cared about _his_ pain, if not about his brother. And so, hesitantly, she reached out her hand and brushed his bare back with her fingertips. 

He stiffened at her touch, and shivered, but he didn’t pull away. Encouraged, Anne shifted closer to him and, propping herself up on one elbow, began to stroke his rigid shoulders. In the dying candlelight, his freckles blazed against his pale skin, and she found herself tracing invisible lines between them, connecting them one by one with her fingertip.

“Anne,” he said after a time, his voice rustling like dead leaves in the cool, darkening air, barely audible.

“Shh,” she soothed, and leaned closer to kiss him. As she did, the ends of her hair brushed his skin and he shivered again, but it was different this time; she was reaching him, comforting him even without words, and so she kept stroking him and kissing him, and gradually, almost muscle by muscle, she felt him relax. 

Still, she didn’t stop until he sighed and turned his head on the pillow, looking up at her with eyes that were almost impossible to read in the dimness. “Anne,” he said a second time, and she pulled back slightly. “He was my brother, Anne. My older brother.”

 _He betrayed my father,_ she thought. _He hurt my sister. He locked me away, and would have sent me to a nunnery so he could steal my fortune._

She waited for him to continue. But as the seconds crawled by, Richard only watched her steadily. Finally, with a small toss of her hair, she said – much too quickly – “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Drowning – it’s not a quick death. At least, I’ve been told it wasn’t quick. Part of me wants to be angry with Edward, but in truth … I do not envy him. Were I the king…”

“Do you know what you would have done?”

He hesitated. His lips moved to form an answer. But then he shook his head ruefully.

“It’s good, then, that you’re not the king.” To her surprise, the words pained her. She closed her eyes as queenly robes flashed briefly in her memory. She opened them again when Richard said, sounding almost amused, “Yes. I have what I want. If only George could have been equally satisfied.”

“We’re lucky,” said Anne, and left it at that because she supposed that it was true. She had a husband who loved her, a healthy son, and wealth. Even if she’d wanted to be queen – and she told herself that she did not – King Edward and his own two sons stood between Richard and the crown. She was lucky.

Her sister had not been. She doubted that George had ever looked at Isabel the way that Richard was looking at her now: with admiration and affection and the beginnings of desire. He reached for her. Fervidly banishing all the what-ifs and if-onlys to the back of her mind, Anne sank into his embrace. 

He was still thinking about his brothers; she could tell, by the way his hands shook as he clasped her face, his fingers tangling in the loose strands of her hair. _It will be all right,_ she thought at him, her mouth fumbling for his. _We are alive. We have each other. We’re lucky._

In that dark bedchamber, amid the rumpled sheets, it almost seemed true. 

9/2/2013


End file.
